Kay Sexton, 91, of Arden Hills passed away Friday, Oct. 17, 2014. Sexton, a former vice president of B. Dalton Bookseller whose reading recommendations were nationally influential, mentored many young booksellers and writers and was honored by Friends of the St. Paul Public Library in 1988 when they established the Kay Sexton Award for outstanding contributions to the Minnesota literary community. (Courtesy photo)

Kay Sexton, a former vice president of B. Dalton Bookseller whose reading recommendations were nationally influential, died Friday at her home in Arden Hills.

She was 91 and had been in declining health for several years, according to her niece, Leslie Walters.

Sexton, who never married but mentored many young booksellers and writers, was honored by Friends of the St. Paul Public Library in 1988 when they established the Kay Sexton Award for outstanding contributions to the Minnesota literary community. The award, which has been given to publishers, authors and librarians, is presented at the annual Minnesota Book Awards spring gala.

“Kay was sharp. She always knew when a title was going to be great before anyone else in the country,” said Norton Stillman, one of Sexton’s oldest friends. They met in the early 1960s when she was selling books at St. Paul department stores.

Stillman, publisher of Nodin Press and former co-owner of The Bookmen book distributorship in Minneapolis, recalled Sexton contacted him late one afternoon at the Bookmen when she was managing B. Dalton’s flagship store in Southdale.

“She asked me to drop off copies of ‘Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex’ because she knew it was going to be a big seller,” Stillman recalled on Monday. “When she was managing the Southdale store, everybody called it ‘Kay’s store’ because she knew what she wanted to do and didn’t pay attention to the buyers. I think that’s why they made her a vice president and put her at headquarters.”

Sexton’s uncanny ability to pick winning books showed in her weekly in-house newsletter, officially known as Hooked on Books but affectionately referred to in the bookselling world as “the green sheet.” This publication, featuring Sexton’s thoughts on what books would appeal to middle America, became the bible of the publishing industry.

Sexton’s friend Gail See said “publishers would do anything to get Kay to put one of their titles in her newsletter. I called her The Force.”

See was president of the American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independent bookstores, in the days when B. Dalton was considered the enemy. She remembers calling Sexton, with some trepidation, to invite her to an ABA board meeting.

“The ABA board thought this was amiss because there was such tension between independents and Dalton,” recalled See, a former owner of the Bookcase in Wayzata. “But she came, and once we reached out to her she was a great bridge between her company and bookstores. We became good friends and I always admired the way she was very wise and able to put things in perspective. She was a wonderful storyteller.”

Among authors to whom Sexton gave thoughtful advice was President Richard Nixon, according to Jeff Hohman, who was B. Dalton divisional merchandise manager with an office adjacent to Sexton’s at the company’s West Bloomington headquarters.

“One day I answered the phone when Kay wasn’t there and it was Nixon,” Hohman recalled. “When his book ‘The Real War’ came out in 1980, he was concerned how it was doing. He would call Kay once a week and they’d have a little chat.”

Hohman, a documentary filmmaker, has no doubt Sexton told the president exactly what she thought. “Kay was singular, honest with everybody, including the chairman of the company,” he said.

Sexton first hired Hohman as a bookseller when she manager the Southdale store, and he was impressed by her approach to books and customers.

“It didn’t matter to Kay what your tastes were. She’d hand you a book and tell you exactly why it was for you, and you’d walk away knowing it was just right for your soul.”

David Unowsky, a Sexton Award-winner and former owner of the Hungry Mind/Ruminator Books, called Sexton “the person who made B. Dalton the dominant bookseller in America for 15 years. They were the first to bring authors to the Twin Cities in the days when touring authors only went to the coasts and Chicago. She was the driving force behind that. Her office in West Bloomington was the place major people in the industry went to bow down.”

Garrison Keillor met Sexton in 1982 when his first book, “Happy to Be Here,” came out and she attended his signing.

“Kay had a tremendous enthusiasm about books and writers, in sharp contrast to our old embittered English professors, and that was a great revelation to me,” Keillor recalled. “When you’re starting out, you really can use a good word from a knowledgeable person, and she was that for sure. A good word from Kay and you were set for life.”

Besides sending out the green sheet, Sexton was a local celebrity because of her weekly television show, “Hooked on Books.”

Marly Rusoff, a Sexton Award-winner who owned the Dinkytown bookstore where the Loft literary center began, was a young sales rep when “going to see Kay was the highlight of the season for me.”

Rusoff, a former vice president of several New York publishing houses, is a New York literary agent and publisher.

“Kay made New York publishers sit up and take notice of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ when nobody was paying any attention,” Rusoff recalled of St. Paulite Robert Pirsig’s book. “Kay was first of all a passionate reader, the best in town with a keen sense of what people would be interested in.”

Everyone who came in contact with Sexton applauds her role as a mentor. Her family recalls that her bookcase-lined office held “the couch” where everyone from secretaries to book buyers and CEOs would come by to pour out their hearts or ask for advice. Her straightforward advice: Know your values, be true to your beliefs, and follow your passion.

Sexton’s three nephews and six nieces also benefited from their aunt’s wisdom.

“Kay was the go-to person when any of us had angst or needed a sounding board,” said Mary Sexton, oldest of the cousins and Kay Sexton’s goddaughter. “We were all kind of terrified of her because she said what she thought, and it wasn’t always exactly what we wanted to hear. She had strong opinions and you did not cross that.”

Mary Sexton, who worked at Odegard Books in St. Paul and was a publisher’s sales rep and bookseller in New York, said she never saw her aunt angry, although she could get irritated.

When Mary Sexton was a young woman, she had no idea of her aunt’s importance until she was in college and walked into a B. Dalton bookstore in New Orleans.

“There was Kay’s picture hanging on the wall,” Mary Sexton recalled. “I knew she was a big deal because she’d send me the the green sheet. But I didn’t make the connection until, oh my gosh, I saw her picture.”

After Kay Sexton retired, she helped create the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and served on the board of Minneapolis-based Graywolf Press. She was legally blind in her last years, but her spirit stayed strong as she welcomed visitors to her luncheon table.

Mary Ann joined the Dispatch-Pioneer Press in 1961 when there were two papers. She has been a fashion writer, a women's columnist and the women's department editor who brought "society" pages into the 20th century. She was named book editor in 1983, just when the local literary community exploded. She has won the Minnesota Book Awards Kay Sexton Award, a Page One Award and YWCA Leader Lunch Award. She retired in 2001 and works part time. A graduate of Macalester College, she lives on St. Paul's West Side in a money-sucking Victorian house with assorted old animals.

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